you never even call me by my name

I don’t go to cowboy bars much, but there seems to be a common thread that runs through my experiences at cowboy bars.

Many of you are probably asking, “Jimbo, is it that you always get into a bar brawl and some redneck breaks a beer bottle over your head?”

No, that’s not it.

Some others are asking, “Is it that you wake up the next morning in bed with your arm around a woman named Lauraleen who is so unattractive that you consider chewing off your arm and leaving—like a coyote entrapped in a barbed wire fence—rather than wake her up?”

No, not that either.

A few are asking, “Is it that you, after a few drinks, begin to weep into your beer and start singing a song in lamentation of a love that done gone bad?”

No, but you’re getting warm. It has to do with a song.

It seems that every time I go to a cowboy bar I hear the same song. Whether someone plays it on the jukebox or the band ends their evening performance with it, and the crowd all stands and sings along with them, or whether someone sings it on karaoke night, it’s always a crowd favorite. By the way, if presented with the option of attending karaoke night at a cowboy bar or staying home alone and being bored, there is only one logical choice: you’ll always be able to find something on television to entertain you.

The song I’m talking about is You Never Even Call Me By My Name, performed by David Allen Coe. If you are an aficionado of the song, you probably remember the lines:

Steve Goodman wrote that song
And he said it was the perfect country-western song

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote about John Prine’s latest CD and I mentioned Steve Goodman in my critique. I’ve always thought that You Never Even Call Me By My Name was an apropos song by which to remember Steve Goodman. He wrote several great songs, but they were all recorded by someone else, Banana Republics was recorded by Jimmy Buffet; City of New Orleans was recorded by Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, et. al., and, of course, David Allen Coe recorded the song that got this rambling all started.

I’ve seen Steve Goodman perform this song live several times. Once it was before 20,000 people in Kemper Arena in Kansas City. That night, Steve borrowed a cowboy hat from some guy in the crowd and wore it while he sang. The song was originally written as satire—that there are certain common elements to country songs—and this one song encompassed many of them. Say what you want about hillbillies, they understood the joke and had no problem laughing along.

As a brief aside, you may recall that I told you a couple weeks ago that on Steve Goodman’s live album he said that he and John Prine wrote City of New Orleans, together. In my research this morning I found that Steve Goodman also gave credit to John Prine for co-writing You Never Even Call Me By My Name, but that John Prine “would not admit it.”

It’s early morning here in the great plains and we have a decision to make: whether to put John Prine’s Fair and Square or Steve Goodman’s live CD into the computer and listen. These are the kinds of tough decisions we have disciplined ourselves to make and I’m sure we’ll make the right one.

We usually do, here in Jimbo’s world.